Japanese visual books, manga, often feature crossdressing in their stories. Whether the crossdresser is the main character or one of the supporting cast they most often are undetected as males dressing a girls unless they are being forced to dress as girls. They are depicted as pretty, sometimes ethereal, and most always, like the other female characters, portrayed wearing short skirts but not always. Meet a few on manga’s crossdressed characters in this post.
In the 1990s TGForum had a regular feature called Manga Focus. Dove Sherman wrote about the plots of manga that included crossdressing or even shape shifting. This Retro Rerun is on a manga titled We Are Mint. A boy misses his twin sister when she goes off to school and he tries to enroll in the school too. When he learns that admissions for boys are closed he enrolls as his sister’s twin sister.
Back in the 1990s Dov Sherman wrote a column for TGForum on Japanese manga and anime. While much of the manga Dov reviewed is no longer available the runaway success of Ranma 1/2 has made it so popular around the world that the manga and anime are always available. Ranma is on interest to us because in the first adventure he falls into a cursed spring and it changes him into a girl. Hot water can change him back into a boy. Think that might make life and love a little difficult? Here is Dov Sherman’s Manga Focus column on Ranma 1/2 from 1997.
